Here is one of the classic cases. If you inherit the sickle cell trait from one parent, it gives some protection against malaria. But if you get it from both parents you get this nasty blood problem, where your red blood cells are shaped like bananas, just look at it, etc… See…
A lot of people with the sickle cell disease are in Sub-Saharan Africa where malaria is worst. Away from malaria, there is no advantage in having this trait, so it dies out. This is the sort of balance that nature is good at.
However, Covid-19 is not in a herd immunity equilibrium: many people have never met it, and we do not know how they will react. We are all a big box of chocolates to Covid-19. It hasn’t even looked at the second layer yet, and there is nothing on the lid telling it to Beware of the Nougat. Covid-19 is not wholly new, and our immune system has a very deep box of tricks, some people may have a better resistance.
Should they have published the data? It is not how science usually works. But suppose you have some early results which suggest only type A’s get it bad. If all the type O’s could go to work in hospitals, and type A’s could become lighthouse-keepers or something. So it makes sense to say “erm, anyone else see some correlation with blood group out there?” before publishing.
While the politicians are running about like headless chickens, science is doing the right thing here. There will be false positives. There will be woo-mongers who will pump out miracle blood-group based cures. But if we all keep our heads, there might be something we can use. It would be surprising if it were as simple and well-known as blood group, but we may get lucky. Yay.
Not just respiratory failure, though, the big problem in some patients seems to be the circulatory system, where the blood clots preventing oxygen passing from the lungs into the bloodstream. It’s been reported that patients have been showing very low oxygen levels in their blood while still breathing normally, talking, and not struggling for breath, those who end up on respirators have in some cases been given blood-thinning drugs which appear to alleviate the symptoms significantly.
I’ve seen reports of instances where medical teams have been trying to insert cannula and finding the blood clotting almost immediately.
This may be one avenue worth investigating, because of the relatively small proportion of the populace exhibiting these particularly drastic symptoms.
I don’t have access to all the various reports I’ve read over the last month or so, but there have been quite a few from various parts of the world, and something about the properties of the blood/circulatory system in those suffering the worst symptoms could offer a real avenue to treating those patients.
@Carla_Sinclair, could you please insert this every time you report something from a pre-print? Please?
You can clearly see why, even in the first comment:
People might not come to the comments and might not realise what @andyf thankfully pointed out above.
Well, I might as well give something instead of only asking. If you care to have a look:
(Want clickbait? Seems like chemical castration of men could be helpful in dealing with Covid-19. Or, phrased neutrally: it seems male hormones make the disease worse.)
One way to find out without paying paying money is to donate blood to the Red Cross, they should then mail you a blood donor card with your blood type listed on it.
Uh yeah, that’s why I was positing some potential issues with the study (not that I am qualified to peer review a study such as this, but they are questions I have from a biological science background). I don’t think we should make a big deal out of studies at the preprint stage. It’s great for sharing info with other researchers, but not so helpful with helping the public navigate the science.
My wife and I are both O. I can be out working in the yard all afternoon and have a bite or two. She’ll come out to tell me supper’s ready and get half a dozen bites.
I was wondering if it might be a male/female thing.
I read ages ago that mozzies preferred certain characteristics - I think balding, overweight people who eat bananas were tops. Our duo has none of these characteristics (or when we’re eating bananas, we both are), but the difference is exactly like what you wrote. He won’t even know there are bugs out, and I’ll be surrounded like Pigpen with a swarm of gnats and other bloodsuckers within seconds.
Another weird data point: my father is not allergic(?) to mosquitoes. Doesn’t get any sort of reaction when they bite him. He farmed in the Missouri River bottoms for decades, so maybe he developed immunity? Or maybe all the sun damage from all those years makes his skin harder to penetrate.
